Haseena Parkar Hindi Movie Review

Here comes a biopic of sorts that goes wrong with the cast. When you choose a subject that is too close in time its credibility takes a beating. More so in times when honesty suffers a huge premium. You get a lurking feel that Apoorva Lakhia is almost on the sly packaging Haseena to us as the woman more wronged than wrong. This is well within his artistic rights. However, he fails to come out in the open and there lies the catch.
The story deals with Haseena Parkar (Shradha Kapoor – in arguably the most laboured performance of recent times) who is first a witness to the growth of her brother – who to the uninitiated is the sibling of Dawood Ibrahim and then a heir to his (under) world in India even as he is still perceived as the most wanted person in India.
The film short for just two hours deals were superficially with how the Bad Bro (Sidhanth Kapoor) takes to crime and is hounded by the system. The script half-heartedly pushes the theory that society creates crime and the criminal does commits it. The film maker obviously lacks the wherewithal to go the whole hog. Even as he is forced to leave the country, she slowly becomes the alternate seat of power. Charged of being the heir to his ill -gotten wealth in court scenes that would make BR Chopra shudder (leave alone Govind Nihlani), she recalls incidents of her life that force the audience to nearly empathise with her. The film maker fails to make the anti-hero of her. He is busy garnering sympathy for her and in the process, makes her fleshless Don with no punch or purpose in her character. You end up being more bored than appreciative or critical of the central character. Yes, you discern a certain romanticising of the D gang and leave without being sure where Haseena is in all this. Shradha, a good artist fails to translate the tough woman and leaves everything to her dialogue delivery style. The strength of the film is its amazing dialogues by Chintan Gandhi and its biggest failure is at the door step of Honey Tehran (casting director). A story that could have been told with a lot of passion is told with tired theatrics and nothing more.

L. Ravichander.